Carmen Ariza Part 31

Jose became desperate. "Rosendo, we _must_ send money to the Bishop in Cartagena. I _must_ stay here--I _must_! And I can stay only by satisfying Wenceslas! If I can send him money he will think me too valuable to remove. It is not the Church, Rosendo, but Wenceslas who is persecuting me. It is he who has placed me here. He is using the Church for his own evil ends. It is he who must be placated. But I--I can't make these poor people buy Ma.s.ses! And--but here, read his letter," thrusting it into Rosendo's hand.

Rosendo shook his head thoughtfully, and a cloud had gathered over his strong face when he returned the Bishop's letter to Jose.

"Padre, we will be hard pressed to support the church and you, without buying Ma.s.ses. There are about two hundred people here, perhaps fifty families. But they are very, very poor. Only a few can afford to pay even a _peso oro_ a month to the schoolmaster to have their children taught. They may be able to give twenty _pesos_ a month to support you and the church. But hardly more."

It seemed to Jose that his soul must burst under its limitations.

"Rosendo, let us take Carmen and flee!" he cried wildly.

"How far would we get, Padre? Have you money?"

No, Jose had nothing. He lapsed into silence-shrouded despair.

The sun dropped below the wooded hills, and Cantar-las-horas had sung his weird vesper song. Dusk was thickening into night, though upon the distant _Sierras_ a mellow glow still illumined the frosted peaks.

Moments crept slowly through the enveloping silence.

Then the mental gloom parted, and through it arose the great soul of the black-faced man sitting beside the despairing priest.

"Padre"--Rosendo spoke slowly and with deep emotion. Tears trickled down his swart cheeks--"I am no longer young. More than sixty years of hards.h.i.+p and heavy toil rest upon me. My parents--I have not told you this--were slaves. They worked in the mines of Guamoco, under hard masters. They lived in bamboo huts, and slept on the damp ground. At four each morning, year after year, they were driven from their hard beds and sent out to toil under the lash fourteen hours a day, was.h.i.+ng gold from the streams. The gold went to the building of Cartagena's walls, and to her Bishop, to buy idleness and luxury for him and his fat priests. When the war came it lasted thirteen years; but we drove the Christian Spaniards into the sea! Then my father and mother went back to Guamoco; and there I was born. When I was old enough to use a _batea_ I, too, washed gold in the Tigui, and in the little streams so numerous in that region. But they had been pretty well washed out under the Spaniards; and so my father came down here and made a little _hacienda_ on the hills across the lake from Simiti. Then he and my poor mother lay down and died, worn out with their long years of toil for their cruel masters."

He brushed the tears from his eyes; then resumed: "The district of Guamoco gradually became deserted. Revolution after revolution broke out in this unhappy country, sometimes stirred up by the priests, sometimes by political agitators who tried to get control of the Government. The men and boys went to the wars, and were killed off.

Guamoco was again swallowed up by the forest--"

He stopped abruptly, and sat some moments silent.

"I have been back there many times since, and often I have washed gold again along the beautiful Tigui," he continued. "But the awful loneliness of the jungle, and the memories of those gloomy days when I toiled there as a boy, and the thoughts of my poor parents' sufferings under the Spaniards, made me so sad that I could not stay. And then I got too old for that kind of work, standing bent over in the cold mountain water all day long, swinging a _batea_ heavy with gravel."

He paused again, and seemed to lose himself in the memory of those dark days.

"But there is still gold in the Tigui. I can find it. It means hard work--but I can do it. Padre, I will go back there and wash out gold for you to send to the Bishop of Cartagena, that you may stay here and protect and teach the little Carmen. Perhaps in time I can wash enough to get you both out of the country; but it will take many months, it may be, years."

O, you, whose path in life winds among pleasant places, where roses nod in the scented breeze and fountains play, picture to yourself, if you may, the self-immolation of this sweet-souled man, who, in the winter of life, the shadows of eternity fast gathering about him, bends his black shoulders again to the burden which Love would lay upon them. Aye, Love, into which all else merged--Love for the unknown babe, left helpless and alone on the great river's bank--Love for the radiant child, whose white soul the agents of carnal greed and l.u.s.t would prost.i.tute to their iniquitous system.

Night fell. By the light of their single candle the priest and Rosendo ate their simple fare in silence. Carmen was asleep, and the angels watched over her lowly bed.

The meal ended, Rosendo took up the candle, and Jose followed him into the bedroom. Reverently the two men approached the sleeping child and looked down upon her. The priest's hand again sought Rosendo's in a grasp which sealed anew the pact between them.

CHAPTER 8

Like the great Exemplar in the days of his preparation, Jose was early driven by the spirit into the wilderness, where temptation smote him sore. But his soul had been saved--"yet so as by fire."

Slowly old beliefs and faiths crumbled into dust, while the new remained still unrevealed. The drift toward atheism which had set in during his long incarceration in the convent of Palazzola had not made him yield to the temptation to raise the mask of hypocrisy and plunge into the pleasures of the world, nor accept the specious proffer of ecclesiastical preferment in exchange for his honest convictions. Honor, however bigoted the sense, bound him to his oath, or at least to a compromising observance of it harmless to the Church. Pride contributed to hold him from the degradation of a renegade and apostate priest. And both rested primarily on an unshaken basis of maternal affection, which fell little short of obsession, leaving him without the strength to say, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"

But, though atheism in belief leads almost inevitably to disintegration of morals, Jose had kept himself untainted. For his vital problems he had now, after many days, found "grace sufficient." In what he had regarded as the contemptible tricks of fate, he was beginning to discern the guiding hand of a wisdom greater than the world's. The danger threatened by Cartagena was, temporarily, at least, averted by Rosendo's magnificent spirit. Under the spur of that sacrifice his own courage rose mightily to second it.

Rosendo spent the day in preparation for his journey into the Guamoco country. He had discussed with Jose, long and earnestly, its probable effect upon the people of Simiti, and especially upon Don Mario, the Alcalde; but it was decided that no further explanation should be made than that he was again going to prospect in the mineral districts already so familiar to him. As Rosendo had said, this venture, together with the unannounced and unsolicited presence of the priest in the town, could not but excite extreme curiosity and raise the most lively conjectures, which might, in time, reach Wenceslas. On the other hand, if success attended his efforts, it was more than probable that Cartagena would remain quiet, as long as her itching palm was brightened with the yellow metal which he hoped to wrest from the sands of Guamoco. "It is only a chance, Padre," Rosendo said dubiously. "In the days of the Spaniards the river sands of Guamoco produced from two to ten _reales_ a day to each slave. But the rivers have been almost washed out."

Jose made a quick mental calculation. A Spanish _real_ was equivalent to half a franc. Then ten _reales_ would amount to five francs, the very best he could hope for as a day's yield.

"And my supplies and the support of the senora and Carmen must come out of that," Rosendo added. "Besides, I must pay Juan for working the _hacienda_ across the lake for me while I am away."

Possibly ten _pesos oro_, or forty francs, might remain at the end of each month for them to send to Cartagena. Jose sighed heavily as he busied himself with the preparations.

"I got these supplies from Don Mario on credit, Padre," explained Rosendo. "I thought best to buy from him to prevent making him angry.

I have coffee, _panela_, rice, beans, and tobacco for a month. He was very willing to let me have them--but do you know why? He wants me to go up there and fail. Then he will have me in his debt, and I become his _peon_--and I would never be anything after that but his slave, for never again would he let me get out of debt to him."

Jose shuddered at the thought of the awful system of peonage prevalent in these Latin countries, an inhuman custom only a degree removed from the slavery of colonial times. This venture was, without doubt, a desperate risk. But it was for Carmen--and its expediency could not be questioned.

Jose penned a letter to the Bishop of Cartagena that morning, and sent it by Juan to Bodega Central to await the next down-river steamer. He did not know that Juan carried another letter for the Bishop, and addressed in the flowing hand of the Alcalde. Jose briefly acknowledged the Bishop's communication, and replied that he would labor unflaggingly to uplift his people and further their spiritual development. As to the Bishop's instructions, he would endeavor to make Simiti's contribution to the support of Holy Church, both material and spiritual, fully commensurate with the population. He did not touch on the other instructions, but closed with fervent a.s.surances of his intention to serve his little flock with an undivided heart. Carmen received no lesson that day, and her rapidly flowing questions anent the unusual activity in the household were met with the single explanation that her padre Rosendo had found it necessary to go up to the Tigui river, a journey which some day she might perhaps take with him.

During the afternoon Jose wrote two more letters, one to his uncle, briefly announcing his appointment to the parish of Simiti, and his already lively interest in his new field; the other to his beloved mother, in which he only hinted at the new-found hope which served as his pillow at night. He did not mention Carmen, for fear that his letter might be opened ere it left Cartagena. But in tenderest expressions of affection, and regret that he had been the unwitting cause of his mother's sorrow, he begged her to believe that his life had received a stimulus which could not but result in great happiness for them both, for he was convinced that he had at last found his _metier_, even though among a lowly people and in a sequestered part of the world. He hoped again to be reunited to her--possibly she might some day meet him in Cartagena. And until then he would always hold her in tenderest love and the brightest and purest thought.

He brushed aside the tears as he folded this letter; and, lest regret and self-condemnation seize him again, hurried forth in search of Carmen, whose radiance always dispelled his gloom as the rus.h.i.+ng dawn shatters the night.

She was not in Rosendo's house, and Dona Maria said she had seen the child some time before going in the direction of the "shales." These were broad beds of rock to the south of town, much broken and deeply fissured, and so glaringly hot during most of the day as to be impa.s.sable. Thither Jose bent his steps, and at length came upon the girl sitting in the shade of a stunted _algarroba_ tree some distance from the usual trail.

"Well, what are you doing here, little one?" he inquired in surprise.

The child looked up visibly embarra.s.sed. "I was thinking, Padre," she made slow reply.

"But do you have to go away from home to think?" he queried.

"I wanted to be alone; and there was so much going on in the house that I came out here."

"And what have you been thinking about, Carmen?" pursued Jose, suspecting that her presence in the hot shale beds held some deeper significance than she had as yet revealed.

"I--I was just thinking that G.o.d is everywhere," she faltered.

"Yes, _chiquita_. And--?"

"That He is where padre Rosendo is going, and that He will take care of him up there, and bring him back to Simiti again."

"And were you asking Him to do it, little one?"

"No, Padre; I was just _knowing_ that He would."

The little lip quivered, and the brown eyes were wet with tears. But Jose could see that faith had conquered, whatever the struggle might have been. The child evidently had sought solitude, that she might most forcibly bring her trust in G.o.d to bear upon the little problem confronting her--that she might make the certainty of His immanence and goodness destroy in her thought every dark suggestion of fear or doubt.

"G.o.d will take care of him, won't He, Padre?"

Jose had taken her hand and was leading her back to the house.

"You have said it, child; and I believe you are a law unto yourself,"

was the priest's low, earnest reply. The child smiled up at him; and Jose knew he had spoken truth.

That evening, the preparations for departure completed, Rosendo and Jose took their chairs out before the house, where they sat late, each loath to separate lest some final word be left unsaid. The tepid evening melted into night, which died away in a deep silence that hung wraith-like over the old town. Myriad stars rained their s.h.i.+mmering l.u.s.tre out of the unfathomable vault above.